Welcome to Whitken & Co.! We are a design studio and lifestyle blog based in Anderson, SC. Our goal is to help you create a beautiful functional, and healing home for you and your family to live, work, play in, and share with others.

Have you every wished you knew how to take better pictures of your kids or just your family in general? I don’t have kids yet, but I have plenty of nieces and nephews and having photos of them (or any of the rest of my family) that I can’t stop staring at is truly a treasure to me. Below are three things that you can start looking for and working on to turn your everyday snapshots into eye catching images. And the best part is, is that you don’t need a fancy camera to start putting these into practice, you can just use your phone!

We’ll delve deeper into these three things in the coming weeks so stay tuned and be sure to share some of your images with me at whitneydonae@gmail.com

1. Light:Just like Meghan Trainor is all about that bass, photography is all about that light. Although I have my preferences as to what kind of light I like in a photograph, I believe that there is no bad light, just light used badly. I’m a sucker for some good, moody window light and the golden hour and back and rim lit photos, but I’ve seen photos that were taken at high noon or in odd colored light that still made strong powerful images just because the photographer was conscious about how they used the light.

2. Composition: Knowing how to compose your photos can help you capture those precious moments that your mind’s eye sees and convey the feeling of the moment. Try not to place everything in the center of the frame and place important elements such as eyes on the third (imagine a tic-tac-toe grid). Also try zooming in to focus the viewers attention and remove distracting elements or zooming out to tell more of the story. Just make sure that when you’re zoomed out that the information you’re including in the frame is actually pertinent to the story you’re trying to capture in your images.

3. Moment: You would think this would be first on the list, but without the proper use of light and strong composition, the moment that you saw can be lost to your viewers. Keep your eyes peeled for those special moments though that you may deem ordinary now, but will mean something in the future. Such as when you see your kid pulling out a wedgie while viewing the fish at the aquarium or takes her paper napkins, climbs a rock and pretends she’s flying, or your husband rubbing your kids toe while he reads them a story, or your dad giving your kids “horsey” rides on his back around your house or your wife drying off your kid right out of the bath and giving them that quick peck on the cheek. These moments are your every day and they are truly special because they tell the story of your family and provide special memories to relive later on.

Next week we’ll dig deeper into the different kinds of light and I’m thinking about hosting a lighting challenge, so stay tuned because I want to see your images!!

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